Putting together a silent and powerful mATX system

Using the Silverstone Fortress FT03S, an mATX case measuring 235mm x 284mm x 487mm (9.25" x 11.18" x 19.17") Hardware Heaven crafted a great machine for HTPC use or for those wanting a quiet and diminutive work station. Inside is a Zotac Z68 board, a Core i3 2100, an Intel 80GB X25-M SSD, two 4GB Corsair Vengenace DDR3 DIMMs, a Sony Blu-Ray drive, an Asus Essence STX Sound Card and the Sapphire Ultimate HD6670 as a discrete GPU. All of that seems a fairly tight fit, but Hardware Heaven shows that even more powerful parts could be contained within. Check out the full build process here.

"Last month we took a look at building a Fusion based HTPC which was based around an m-ITX motherboard and silent case. This system offered good media playback and decent general computing however there are consumers who require more performance from a compact system. Therefore today we are going to look at building a compact, stylish system based on Intel's Z68 chipset in ITX form (The Zotac Z68-ITX) and the Core i3-2100."